101 FASCINATING CANADIAN MUSIC FACTS

find about Santana, discovering he was a follower of the teachings of the Indian guru Sri Chinmoy and had recently changed his name to Devadip. Manzer made an inlay with this spiritual name, along with an om — the sacred symbol of Hinduism that represents inner peace. Before packaging the guitar and sending it to Graham and Sandra, Manzer played it to open it up. She was living with another couple who also worked for Larrivée, and they were playing John Denver’s Christmas record non-stop. “I put that guitar up to the speakers as we listened,” Manzer recalls. “If ever one can find Denver’s influence in Santana’s work, it would be because that is what the guitar started out listening to!”

Many months later, Manzer was reading a feature interview with Santana in Guitar Player magazine one afternoon and nearly fell out of her chair. The reason, the following sentence: “This friend of mine, Linda Manzer, made me a guitar with a really great tone!”

Those 15 words inked in print were life- changing and launched Manzer’s career. Over the next 45 years, the master luthier (a skilled craftsperson who makes and repairs stringed instruments) designed guitars for everyone from Canadians Bruce Cockburn and Stephen Fearing to American jazz musician Pat Metheny. “I was just in the right place at the right time,” she recalls. “People say you are not supposed to say you are lucky; you make your own luck, but I really feel like I’ve been incredibly lucky.”

Powwow Band w ows Grammys2 P owwow B and wows G rammys

The story of the Indigenous music group Northern Cree began in 1982. The Wood brothers (Steve, Randy, Charlie, and Earl) from the Saddle Lake Cree Nation gathered and forged a plan to bring their traditional music to a larger audience beyond the boundaries of their reserve of Saddle Lake, Alberta.

Over the past 40 years they’ve succeeded. The band has swelled to 17 rotating members. They’ve released more than 20 albums and countless other live recordings. They’ve been nominated for nine Grammys and three Junos, and they’ve performed around the world.

“We’ve taken the powwow out of its traditional setting and put it on stage just like other music,” explains Northern Cree co-founder Steve Wood. “When I was 14 years old, I attended my first- ever concert in Edmonton, Alberta, at the newly built Northlands Coliseum. We were on our way to a powwow in the south of Calgary and stopped in Edmonton. The artist was Kiss. I sat there watching Ace [Frehley] and the rest of the band playing that night and thought, ‘Why can’t we put our music on a stage like this?’ I realized we could. It’s just how you present it. I had a dream then and it has come to fruition. We’ve now performed in front of audiences up to 50,000.”

Wood recalls attending the Grammys:

The first time we attended the Grammy Awards, we had only ever seen them on TV before. We had never seen anything like it … all these people in penguin suits! What did we do? We copied them of course. We rented tuxedos and wore uncomfortable shoes. I didn’t enjoy that, plus nobody spoke to us. So, the next time we attended, we decided to dress as ourselves. We wore ribbon shirts that were created by a Native designer to our first Grammy party. We were like magnets that night. People, out of the blue, kept coming up to us.

I’ll never forget that moment when our limo driver with the eight of us piled inside

DAVID M c PHERSON

pulled up to the red carpet. The usher came to the door, ready to greet us. Instead, our driver locks the doors. The ushers on the red carpet are looking through the windows trying to see who we were. We waited 45 seconds before unlocking the doors. We jumped out. All of us were wearing headdresses and the women were in beautiful beadwork. There was a huge crowd of photographers around a young lady ahead of us on the red carpet. One of the photographers notices us and begins snapping endless photos. Soon all the photographers notice us and move to where we are, leaving the young lady standing alone, off to the side. An usher tells her she needs to move. At that moment, the woman in front of us turns and says to one of the crew, “Who are you guys anyway?” They replied: “Northern Cree!” Then, my son turned to me and said, “Dad, that is Camila Cabello!”

We continued to walk along the red carpet and talk to some reporters. Then, a woman comes up to me and says, “My client wants to take a picture with you guys.” I said no problem. You know who it was?

Cyndi Lauper! I had listened to her all the time during my studies at the University of Saskatchewan. Cyndi says to me, “I’ve been here many times and you guys are the best dressed I’ve ever seen!”

While we may not have won a Grammy, we were already winners, making those connections that identifies, recognizes, and respects our ethnicity/culture.

In 2017, we opened the Grammy Awards in the afternoon, before the telecast, as the first official act. It was unbelievable! Later, I looked at all of the performers from that day and we had the most views, second only to Beyoncé. I didn’t go to the evening ceremony. Instead I returned to our hotel, called my wife, and went to sleep. When I woke up, I looked at our YouTube page and read all of the comments about our performance. We had millions of hits on our page. Many of the comments were from our people across Turtle Island. One in particular stands out. The person wrote: “I was standing in front of the TV screen with my 86-year- old grandmother holding hands and we were both crying!” We had really done something huge for all our people.

A classically trained opera singer, who once sang arias at Carnegie Hall, giving voice lessons to a rock ’n’ roll star? Sounds like fantasy, but it’s true.

Tenor Edward L. Johnson, born in Hamilton, Ontario, was the youngest member of the New York Metropolitan Opera company and a founding member of the Hamilton Opera Company. He was an in-demand opera star that sang on some of the biggest stages throughout North America.

In 1976, Johnson decided to retire from touring and settled in Fergus, Ontario, to focus on teaching the bel canto method, which translated means “beautiful singing.” Johnson learned this Italian vocal technique, which dates back to the 15th century, from Giuseppe Giuffrida at the Metropolitan Opera.

Little known fact: many of Johnson’s students were more apt to play blue- collar bars than soft- seat theatres. Brian Vollmer, lead singer of hard-rock band Helix, is one of these disciples; he credits Johnson with saving his voice and prolonging his career. Before taking lessons with Johnson, the singer was diagnosed with nodes on his vocal cords so bad that doctors told him if he continued to sing he would probably never be able to speak to his children. Instead of opting for surgery, Vollmer found Johnson.

“Ed was like a father to me,” the Helix front man says. “He not only saved my voice, but he also taught me to be a teacher. Of all the students that he taught to be teachers, I was the only one he gave his blessing to. Why? Because I took almost every Monday for 16 years to drive from London to Fergus to not only take a lesson with him, but also to talk about the technique. Bel canto was largely passed down by word of mouth through the centuries. It’s the only way to sing without tension on the vocal cords. However, very little was written down about the technique, which led to charlatan voice teachers claiming that they taught ‘bel canto’ when in reality they knew nothing about it.”

David Lee Roth (Van Halen’s original lead singer) once saw Blue Rodeo perform at Toronto’s Horseshoe Tavern. So did actor Tom Cruise. And while Canada’s favourite rootsrockers never “made it” south of the border, they certainly had their share of celebrity fans. One of those American admirers led to the 11-time Juno Award–winning group from Toronto landing a gig in a Hollywood film. Picture this. You are a rising Canadian band trying to make inroads in the United States. Your label (Atlantic Records) has you slogging the long and winding road stateside. Night after night you play sleazy bars in Texas towns and Florida watering holes to audiences who do not get your music. You wonder, is this worth it? Then, one night during a break in this monotony — at a dive bar in Austin,